How to choose LED lamps for home: overview, characteristics, prices

Recommendation points

• Advantages and disadvantages of LED lamps
• Selection criteria for LED lamps
• Power and payback
• Light color temperature
• Base type
• additional characteristics
• Manufacturers and prices

LED bulbs offer advantages over traditional incandescent bulbs in many cases. We will discuss how to make the right choice depending on the characteristics and type of base, consider the main manufacturers and compare the prices of lamps on the market.

LED bulbs for home lighting only became widespread in the late 20th century, when the first cheap blue LEDs or LEDs appeared. Since then, interest in such lamps has been constantly growing, which is associated with the excess of their advantages over disadvantages and a wide range of applications. So what are they good for, and how to choose the right models for your home?

Advantages and disadvantages of LED lamps

It is customary to compare LED devices with traditional incandescent lamps, although even when compared with energy-saving, more modern and technological ones, they have advantages in several ways.

Among the advantages of LED lamps are:

• energy efficiency;
• low heat generation;
• extremely long service life;
• the choice of light – warm, cold, daytime;
• environmental friendliness (in products of responsible manufacturers);
• strength;
• easy installation;
• disposal possibility.

Due to the low temperature on the base, such luminaires can be installed in places where an incandescent lamp could lead to a fire. If necessary, LED lamps can have small bulb sizes and be built into furniture, decorative panels, serve as spotlights.

It should be borne in mind that LED lamps still emit a lot of heat, however, unlike their predecessors, heat is not emitted along with the light, but is directed in the opposite direction, through the LED substrate to the mounting plate. In order for the device to work for a long time and not reduce its characteristics, it is important to provide for a heat sink. High quality lamps use an aluminum finned radiator located between the bulb and base.

1. Base. 2. LED driver. 3. Flask body. 4. Radiator. 5. LED block

There are few disadvantages of LED lamps, and the main one is the cost, which exceeds the price of incandescent lamps, but is already comparable to energy-saving ones. However, given that an LED lamp can last 50 times longer, this cost no longer seems exorbitant..

Other disadvantages are not as noticeable:

• supply of light in one direction (not always a disadvantage);
• decrease in brightness as a result of LED burnout over time;
• in low-quality lamps, there may be “flicker” that is not visible to the eye, but harmful to vision;
• there is a product on the market manufactured using outdated technologies – with a spectrum that is harmful to the retina.

In this regard, you should not purchase products with indistinct markings, without specifying technical characteristics, from unknown manufacturers..

Selection criteria for LED lamps

When choosing LED lamps for lighting a house, several main characteristics are considered, on which not only the value of the electricity bill depends, but also the compatibility of the elements of the electrical network, design possibilities, even the mood of people.

What characteristics should you pay special attention to when buying? Let’s list the main.

Power and payback

A person who is used to focusing on the Watts indicated on the glass of a traditional lamp needs to look for information on the packaging about which incandescent lamp is replaced by LED. Sometimes this value is indicated directly – in watts, sometimes in percent. In such devices, the light power can exceed the consumed one by 3.5-12 times, but more often the coefficient is 5-5.5.

By replacing all the lamps in the apartment, you can get significant savings. For clarity of such savings, we made a calculation for a conditional example and compared the energy consumption for one apartment of incandescent and LED lamps. Suppose each lamp is on for 5 hours per day, i.e. 150 h per month, the average luminosity power conversion factor is 5. The calculation result is summarized in Table 1.

Table 1. Comparison of energy consumption when using LED lamps and traditional incandescent lamps.

	Quantity, pcs	Power, W	Electricity, kWh
Incandescent lamps
40 watts	4	160	24
60 watts	6	360	54
100 watts	1	one hundred	15
Total:			93
LED lamp
8 watts	4	32	4.8
12 watts	6	72	10.8
20 watts	1	20	3.0
Total:			18.6
Saving			74.4

With the average cost of electricity in Russia 4.12 rubles / kW * h, the savings will be about 3700 rubles per year. If we add to the energy efficiency the long service life of LED lamps, which, unlike traditional ones, do not require frequent replacement, then the savings over time will even more exceed the initially high cost, and the purchase will fully justify itself.

Luminous flux as a method for determining manufacturer reliability

Luminous flux is the amount of radiation perceived by the human eye. For gradation, the flux is measured by photometers, the unit of measurement is Lumen. When replacing traditional lamps with LEDs, look for information on luminous flux, luminous and power consumption and check the accuracy of the data according to Table 2.

Table 2. Ratio of luminous flux and luminous power.

Light power, W	Luminous flux, lm
25	250
40	415
50	560
60	710
75	940
one hundred	1340

If the package says that a 7.5 W lamp corresponds to a light power of 60 W, and its flux is 400 lm, this is a reason to think about the degree of reliability of the manufacturer. When buying a lamp, you imagine how light it should be when a 60-watt incandescent light bulb is on. If the flux is specified as 400 lm, you will get the luminosity of a 40 watt incandescent lamp. Don’t let it deceive you.

Light color temperature

LED bulbs can emit light at a certain temperature, measured in Kelvin (K). They are conventionally divided into:

• warm – 2700 K
• neutral – 4000 K;
• cold – 6500 K.

In addition to the basic shades of light, depending on the color temperature, halftones, shades of yellow and daylight are distinguished. Moreover, the recommendations of both doctors and designers are very similar: you need to select the color temperature of the light depending on the purpose. So, for the office, mobilizing cold light is suitable, in the bedroom it is warm, in the children’s lamps should not be sharply white, yellowish soft shades are better suited. The entrance hall, sanitary rooms benefit from neutral lighting, and the light in the kitchen is selected individually, depending on whether this is a place exclusively for cooking or a company of friends is constantly sitting there or someone reads in the evening, does.

Base type

The type of base is important if you are replacing only a lamp, and not a chandelier, sconce or floor lamp. In this case, the base of the new lamp must match the existing lamp holder. In addition, the shape depends on the purpose of the lighting fixture and its location. There are a lot of types of sockets, but, as a rule, only a few are used for home lamps:

• E27 – threaded, familiar, like most incandescent lamps;
• E14 – thin or minion, popularly referred to as a small base, threaded;
• T8 – base for a flask in the form of a tube, installed instead of fluorescent lamps in table and ceiling lamps;
• GU10, GU5.3, G9 – plinths for spotlights in stretch and suspended ceilings, differ in the way of installation (with rotation, without rotation) and the shape of the contacts.

Popular types of base for LED lamps

additional characteristics

From the point of view of aesthetics of the room and design, the shape of the bulb and the angle of light diffusion are important, which is almost always fixed for LED lamps. The most common forms are:

• pear (traditional);
• ball;
• candle;
• “Candle in the wind”;
• a tube;
• “Corn” (multiple LEDs on the side surfaces of the elongated bulb).

The angle of dispersion of such a bulb as corn is comparable to that of traditional lamps – the light is directed in all directions. Most other base / plinths can illuminate the space in a cone with apex angle of up to 120 °. Some highly directional LED lamps cover 90 °, 60 ° and even 30 °, which is especially interesting for street lighting equipment. The illuminated area, in addition to the scattering angle, also depends on the installation height of the luminaire.

If you want to be able to smoothly change the illumination in a room using a power regulator – a dimmer, you need dimmable lamps. Visually, they do not differ in any way, so when buying, look for the appropriate sign or inscription.

When purchasing lamps and a dimmer, make sure that the regulator matches the total power of all lamps included in the lamp. This is especially important to remember if your chandelier is multi-arm..

An important factor when choosing is the resource, but this parameter is stated in different ways. Chinese manufacturers, as a rule, indicate the full theoretical resource – until the lamp goes out completely, the eminent ones declare an effective resource – the duration of the lamp without losing brightness. In addition, serious companies give a 3-5 year warranty for LED lamps, which indirectly confirms the declared effective resource. If the warranty is missing or not long enough (1 year), there is reason to doubt the quality of the LED lamp.

The better the heat sink is provided in the lamp, the longer the semiconductor resource.

Lamps with a heatsink and a ribbed aluminum “cup” that removes heat from the LEDs last longer. When buying lamps with transparent glass, you can make sure that the heat sink takes heat from the LEDs. If the diffuser is plastic, matte, it remains to take the seller’s word.

Also extends the service life of installing several less powerful LEDs in one lamp instead of one more powerful one.

Manufacturers and prices

Manufacturers who do not indicate their name on the packaging, most likely, do not care about the compliance of the declared parameters and the safety of using their product. Certified products from well-known manufacturers are certainly more expensive, but in this case, you pay for the environmental friendliness of the house, for a long resource, for eye-safe light.

Among European manufacturers, the leaders are:

• Philips, the Netherlands is an international corporation that has been producing LED lamps since 2008. Plants are located in many countries, including China, Malaysia. Healthcare programs. The cost of lamps – 500-2000 rubles.
• Osram, Germany – until 2013 a subsidiary of Siemens, more than 100 years of history. Prices: 400-1600 rubles.
• Foton Lighting, Great Britain – products certified in Russia at a price of 700-1700 rubles.

The time for unnamed Chinese manufacturers distributing products of dubious quality through small online stores is almost gone. Zavodskoy China is represented on the LED lamp market in Russia by companies:

• Camelion – the declared characteristics correspond to the real ones, there are certificates of conformity, the guarantee is 3 g. The price of lamps: 100-450 rubles.
• Selecta – large assortment, acceptable quality. The cost of ceiling lamps (complete) 1200-1300 rubles.
• Estares – ТМ MaySun. A well-known company selling lamps for 200-500 rubles.

Russian manufacturers of LED lamps:

• Gauss – strict quality control and implementation not only in the Russian Federation, but also for export. Price: 400 – 2000 rubles.
• Optogan – full production cycle, own research. Price: 500-700 rubles.
• JSC “Svetlana-Optoelectronica” – provide mainly industrial and street lighting. For household use, only a few models are produced, including SvetaLED® 11 W (bulb – “pear”), price – 700 rubles, and LED lamps with autonomous control, price 2000 – 2100 rubles.